Themes from Consultation Meeting in North Bay

This is a summary of thoughts expressed by members of the public who attended this consultation meeting. If a point was made by more than one participant, it is included only once in the summary. The comments below sometimes contradict one another because they reflect the diversity of the viewpoints of participants.

Number of public participants: 17

Thoughts about Principles

Accountability

  • In a single-member system, you know who your representative is. In a multi-member system you do not know who to go to.
  • Accountability comes from voting for an individual, not for a party.
  • You need a local representative to hold accountable. I don’t see any way to hold a party accountable.
  • There is no accountability once a party is in power with a majority.

Effective parliament

  • Parliament should represent more viewpoints; more parties should have seats to better represent us.
  • Individual MPPs should have more power in parliament (e.g. more free votes, more speaking time).
  • I believe Canadians would like to see less party discipline.
  • The legislature holds the executive accountable.

Effective parties

  • More small parties should be able to gain representation.
  • Is there a party that would not be ruled by business interests?

Fairness of representation

  • Results should be proportional (seat share should equal vote share); this would do a better job of reflecting the wishes of voters.
  • If you focus on local representation, manufactured majorities are not a problem; they reflect a true majority of ridings.
  • Regional representation is necessary because Ontario is a large province.
  • In Toronto, I think people vote for a party, but in the North we vote for a local representative. For me, fairness means we have a representative for Nipissing.
  • The North needs strong local representatives and a fixed number of seats, despite its small and decreasing population.
  • Women are not fairly represented in the legislature.
  • We should not mandate demographic representation; this would be divisive and lead to disenfranchisement.
  • The Premier’s constituency is not represented.

Legitimacy

  • Practices like strategic voting and choosing the lesser of evils are undemocratic.

Simplicity & practicality

  • Simplicity and practicality should be the overarching principles in the choice of an electoral system.

Stable & effective government

  • Governments should do what they promised to do rather than fearing an election.
  • Coalition governments would encourage “pork-barrel” politics.
  • I am fearful of having too many parties and ending up with less efficient government.

Stronger voter participation

  • Young people are dissatisfied with the current electoral system; they think that they have no power, choice, or connection.
  • People don’t vote because they think their votes don’t count, or because they think there is no choice.
  • Changing the system will increase voter participation.
  • Changing the system will not increase voter participation.

Voter choice

  • The fact that voters do not have much choice prevents them from expressing their true preferences.
  • I vote for a person in my riding because I like him but I don’t care for the party he represents.
  • If you don’t think we have enough choice, why don’t you run?
  • If there were more than one candidate from the same party running in my riding, then maybe I would vote.
  • More voter choice would improve the quality of politicians.

Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System

Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:

  • Our system provides strong geographic representation.
  • We know who our member is and we can hold him or her accountable.

Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:

  • The current system does not adequately reflect the wishes of voters.
  • It encourages strategic voting.
  • I don’t think that it reflects the interests of enough of society; it is fairly narrow in its scope.

Thoughts about Other Systems

Participants made these comments about other systems:

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)

  • MMP lets people vote for both local and party concerns; this would increase voter choice.
  • MMP gives people both regional and party representation; this is fairer representation.
  • MMP would get young people involved.

Proportional Representation (PR) systems

  • PR eliminates strategic voting and seat bonuses.
  • By moving to a PR system, I am worried that the North would lose the local representation that we need.
  • If we vote for a party and not for an individual, we will not have accountability. In a list system, the members are accountable to the party, not to the voters.
  • What role would independents have in a PR system?
  • PR may improve demographic representation.

Other Thoughts

Size of districts

  • It is easy to access members by phone or email, but to access them in person is difficult because of the geographic distances in the North.
  • There is a difference in need across the size of our ridings that exist now; if we were to go to larger ridings it would be even worse.

Size of the legislature

  • I am not sure about changing the size of the legislature; maybe we need different rules in the house.
  • The public thinks that there are enough politicians already; recommending more seats would be unpopular, even if a new system requires them.

Other comments

  • I think more education would make people feel more involved.
  • I think we have to be careful not to try to use the electoral system to fix things that it cannot solve (e.g. voter participation).
  • You can have good or bad results with any system.
  • In terms of the nomination process, you get into a lot of cases where two very good riding candidates want to run for the same party but one is eliminated.

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